Attending
the University of
Toronto, Kenner studied under Marshall McLuhan, who wrote the
introduction to Kenner's first book Paradox in Chesterton.Kenner's second book,
The Poetry of Ezra Pound (1951)
was dedicated to McLuhan, who had introduced Kenner to Pound on
June 4, 1948, during Pound's incarceration at St. Elizabeths
Hospital, Washington,
D.C., where Kenner and McLuhan had driven as a detour
from their trip from Toronto to New Haven,
Connecticut. (Pound, who became a friend of Kenner's,
had suggested the book be titled The Rose in the Steel
Dust.) Later, Kenner had said of McLuhan, "I had the advantage
of being exposed to Marshall when he was at his most creative, and
then of getting to the far end of the continent shortly afterward,
when he couldn't get me on the phone all the time. He could be
awfully controlling."

The Pound Era, the product of years of scholarship and
considered by many to be Kenner's masterpiece, was published in
1971. This work was responsible for enshrining Pound's reputation
(damaged by his wartime activities) as one of the greatest Modernists.

Kenner was married twice: his first wife, Mary Waite, died in 1964;
the couple had three daughters and two sons. His second wife, whom
he married in 1965, was Mary-Anne Bittner; they had a son and a
daughter. Hugh Kenner died on November 24, 2003.